[Potemkin]

I consider the liberal right a bulwark against antiliberal forces.

Fixed it for you, Kaiserschmarrn.

And helmut is totally wrong about the centre-right not being liberal. They are economically liberal to their fingertips, and they are willing to sacrifice anything on the altar of that economic liberalism, even their traditional social conservatism. After all, having a liberal economic system and an illiberal social system is a contradiction. That contradiction has to be resolved, and for the bourgeoisie money trumps every other consideration. Lol.

[Rich]

After all, having a liberal economic system and an illiberal social system is a contradiction.

Isn't Gladstone pretty much the gold standard of economic liberalism and by the standards of our times he'd be a pretty extreme social conservative.

[Potemkin]

Isn't Gladstone pretty much the gold standard of economic liberalism and by the standards of our times he'd be a pretty extreme social conservative.

Indeed, and this was a contradiction. After all, is British society best described as being "socially conservative" now? If not, then why didn't Victorian morality remain dominant? It's because if you insist that people's economic relations must be governed by liberal principles of individual freedom but then turn around and insist that their social relations must be governed by patriarchal principles enshrined in a three thousand year old religious text written by Iron Age tribesmen, then people are eventually going to say, "Hang on a minute...."

[hartmut]

Fixed it for you, Kaiserschmarrn.

And helmut is totally wrong about the centre-right not being liberal. They are economically liberal to their fingertips, and they are willing to sacrifice anything on the altar of that economic liberalism, even their traditional social conservatism. After all, having a liberal economic system and an illiberal social system is a contradiction. That contradiction has to be resolved, and for the bourgeoisie money trumps every other consideration. Lol.

Kaiserschmarrn did you regard that kind of liberal-right "a bulwark against antidemocratic forces."?

(I see that you are "not too keen to quibble about labels", but more easily labelling groups, like "the left", as "greatest danger to democracy in the west today", without a adequate effort to define them nor an alleged counterpart.
Of course, some times a zest lures in cooking muddy soups. To give in to that brings usually no clarification. )

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Fixed it for you, Kaiserschmarrn.

Surely, it should go without saying that liberals are opposed to anti-liberal forces.

I was actually talking about democracy though. The liberal right tends to have an easier time accepting the democratic decisions I mentioned, probably because the liberal left is much more paternalistic in its outlook. For them, the election and referendum results have been catastrophic and they are trying to rationalise and legitimise their opposition to them with Putin's interference and alleged stupidity of voters.

Kaiserschmarrn did you regard that kind of liberal-right "a bulwark against antidemocratic forces."?

(I see that you are "not too keen to quibble about labels", but more easily labelling groups, like "the left", as "greatest danger to democracy in the west today", without a adequate effort to define them nor an alleged counterpart.
Of course, some times a zest lures in cooking muddy soups. To give in to that brings usually no clarification. )

My point is that you can call the groups in question whatever you want, hartmut. As long as we both know who we are talking about it doesn't really matter what label we apply.

If you want to be deliberately obtuse, go ahead, but I won't be wasting my time with responding.

[hartmut]

..
My point is that you can call the groups in question whatever you want, hartmut. As long as we both know who we are talking about it doesn't really matter what label we apply.

If you want to be deliberately obtuse, go ahead, but I won't be wasting my time with responding.

Kaiserschmarrn,
firstly it is primarily you wasting your time "with responding", not me.
Secondly I am not "deliberately obtuse", but simply try to understand which way members do think.
And of course, as long as we are agreeing about which social groups we are talking, we will have less trouble to "understand" each other.
But would not catch the mind.
So I asked, because I do not assume that we have similar perception of whom we are talking.

Back to the thread:
I agree with you, that presumably we now see a seductive deflection of inner trouble to conjured outward sources, a doing which has a very long tradition in politics.